Tom, I am supporting my family by only means of daytrading for last 7 yrs.Most of the traders are loosers,because they do not learn the trading from real profitable pro.I want lot of loosers in trading, thats how we make $$.But those lucky 10-20% are big winners.Do you know 80/20 rule in life,80% people will be mediocore at best,rest 20% will have the 97% wealth of the world.
"Tom, I am supporting my family by only means of daytrading for last 7 yrs." Jack if you can support yourself as a daytrader I take my hat off to you, it's not something I could do. Likewise I doubt if I could make a living as a full time trader, forcing trades trying to make x amount of dollars a year. It's unfortunate I couldn't remember the title of the thread I was responding to when I posted this thread as maybe my comments would have seemed more appropriate there. My point is that there are ways to take money out of the market without knowing all the tools these traders were trying to convince the newbie he needed to master to be successful. I think many of the posters were more concerned about "being a trader" than what I'm interested in- making money. I'm not a trader or an investor, but will make a trade if I like what I see and my gut feeling tells me it should work. I believe people can make decisions in life based on their gut feelings. I recently had strong feelings about Goldman Sachs at $55 and BAC at $3 and let outside influence and subsequent indecision prevent me from executing those trades. It bothers me more that I wasn't true to myself and took that risk, than if I had made the trades and took a loss because I was wrong.
Most traders don't know what they're doing. Unfortunately, the few good ones are lumped in with them.
10-20% are big winners is probably overstated 10-fold. Try 1% or less... most of those who are NOT losers are breaking even or making small amounts. And few make BIG money for years. Most of the ones who do well for awhile will learn about the most important statistic in trading "Risk of Ruin" when they blow out an account or two.
1% or less are winners? Where do you get your numbers from? I've been only day trading for 1 year and I'm doing fine. What worries me is whether or not I'm beating the buy and hold strategy. For the most part, I am.
If you are breaking even after commissions, you just a need little tweaking, ignore these schmucks! Keep up the good work. suds
"You are not a trader - you are just in a lucky streak and your next 6 trades could easily wipe you back to nothing. Just because all you play is AA and KK won't make you a profitable trader in the long run, sorry." Don't claim to be a trader, don't want to be one. Am enjoying the life I lead, the $$$ I made and am in no rush to give it back. But if I get another strong feeling about a stock later this year......
I'd like to point out that I do believe that 90% of traders lose money. What I find funny is that 99% of traders on message boards claim that they have struck it rich in the markets, lol. I highly doubt that this individual turned his $50k into a quadrillion dollars in 4 trades. In fact, most people who claim the highly unlikely are full of it. Especially the ones who go on and on about how easy it was. A profitable trader understands how hard it is to be profitable and how long it takes to understand how the markets function. If you want to be part of the 10% then it takes a lot of study, experience and trial and error. Who here believes that on this individual's FIRST TRADE he struck it rich with options and turned a $50k account into $250k in short order? If you do then you're an idiot. Although I only read through his initial message, the poster made no mention of a methodology. Where is his edge? All he said was that he makes high probability plays --that's not a methodology. It's like me saying that I only make trades that make money. And even if he does have one, what kind of methodology provides 4 trades in 6 years? If you have an edge in this market then it's a numbers game. Casino's make money year after year ---yet it doesn't matter what game you pick, the casino has quite a chance to be in the red if they only played 4 rounds in their entire existence. While the probabilities approach 100% that the casino will make money as the number of rounds of their games played approach infinity (i know you can actually approach infinity, but you get what i mean). So a casino with a gauranteed edge may only have a slightly better than 50% chance of being in the green after 1 play they have a close to 100% chance of being in the green after an abnormally large number of plays. Basically the story, just like thousands more like it on message boards, doesn't really make sense.